The Department of Nursing is an integral part of Missouri State University and the College of Health and Human Services. The Department of Nursing is dedicated to excellence in: (1) undergraduate and graduate nursing education, (2) scholarship, and (3) service.
EDUCATION
The Department of Nursing promotes the general mission of the University and the College, developing educated persons, by providing students with the opportunity to think critically, solve problems, communicate effectively, develop self-responsibility, and grow personally and professionally as citizens within a pluralistic society. The Department offers an undergraduate program, building upon a base of knowledge from the arts, sciences, and technical nursing education that prepares students for professional nursing practice. Building upon baccalaureate nursing education, the graduate programs prepare nurses for advanced practice and teaching roles. The Department promotes an educational environment that encourages life-long learning and the spirit of inquiry. Access to professional nursing education in Southwest Missouri is facilitated through educational technology and distance learning programs.
SCHOLARSHIP
The scholarly mission of the University, College, and Department is accomplished through the promotion of faculty and student scholarship. Faculty scholarship enhances health care through the scholarship of integration, application, discovery, and teaching. In all types of scholarship, the faculty encourages the direct and indirect involvement of students.
SERVICE
The service mission is accomplished through the involvement of faculty and students in academic, professional, and community service. The Department provides leadership, serving as experts in nursing education, practice, and scholarship, to the community and the Southwest Missouri region. The Department faculty and students participate in the shared governance structure of the university by serving on university, college, and departmental committees.
The Department of Nursing is based on the continued professional development of its faculty and students through education, scholarship, and service, and builds upon theories, principles, and the concepts of: professional nursing, client, environment, health, and learning. These concepts are integral to nursing education.
The Department of Nursing believes that Professional Nursing is a science and an art. Nursing's unique body of knowledge incorporates life experiences, and builds upon theories and principles from the liberal arts and sciences, as well as from nursing science, practice, and scholarship. The faculty believe that nursing is an autonomous and collaborative discipline that practices within a framework of ethical and professional standards. As a practice discipline, nurses provide care in a variety of roles to clients in diverse settings and nursing requires a commitment to professional development and life-long learning.
As a practice discipline, nurses provide care in the role of care provider, designer, manager, and coordinator of care to clients in diverse settings. Nurses implement advanced roles as nurse educator, researcher, clinician, and consultant.
Through the use of critical thinking and therapeutic communication, nurses assist clients in meeting health care needs using systematic approaches. At the undergraduate level, professional nurses are prepared to identify health care needs, to design nursing systems that provide, manage, and evaluate health care of clients in diverse settings. Building upon undergraduate education, the graduate program prepares professional nurses for advanced nursing roles as family nurse practitioners and nurse educators. Family nurse practitioners provide primary care across the life span. Nurse educators facilitate the teaching-learning process of individuals and groups in a variety of settings.
The client, as living systems, are unique holistic beings composed of physiological, psychological, spiritual, social, and cultural dimensions, that are in continuous interaction with the environment. Individuals have inherent dignity and self-worth and are in a continuous state of growth and development across the life span. Individuals are self-determining, however, each individual functions interdependently with other individuals, families, and communities. Although vulnerable to disease, clients have the potential capacity to combat disease, to recover, and to adapt to their internal and external environment.
The environment includes everything that surrounds the client. The environment has physiological, psychological, spiritual, social and cultural dimensions that interact with the client and can have individual, as well as global implications for health and health care. Nurses engage in therapeutic nursing interventions that manage, modify, and manipulate the internal and external environmental dimensions to promote optimal health and prevent disease.
Health is a description of the holistic, dynamic, multidimensional optimal state of the client. Health is composed of interacting physiological, psychological, spiritual, social, and cultural dimensions and is a result of the constant interaction with the environment. Disease, as a component of health, is a manifestation of these client-environment interactions. Nurses assist clients to restore, maintain and promote health, to prevent and treat disease, and when death is imminent, to support dying with dignity.
Learning is a dynamic interactive process involving communication and critical thinking that builds upon previous experiences and knowledge. Learning occurs at different rates for different individuals, and implies a shared responsibility between the learner and the educator. Faculty recognize the unique needs of the learner. Acting as facilitator and catalyst in the learning process, faculty foster the development of professional skills, critical thinking, and lifelong learning, and support the internalization of professional values.